UK Royal Mail misses quality of service targets

Royal Mail last year delivered nine out of ten First Class letters the next working day, but has missed its year-end quality of service targets.

The full year cumulative result for year ending March 2004 for First Class mail was 90.1 per cent, against a target of 92.5 per cent.

Chief Executive Adam Crozier said: “I accept that our quality of service has not been good enough. Every letter is important to us and we are urgently working to improve our quality of service for customers.”

Up until September Royal Mail’s service was the best on record, with June – September performance reaching 93.1 per cent, ahead of target. However the industrial action in the autumn severely hit its deliveries and First Class performance fell to around 85 per cent.

First Class service quality recovered during the final three months of the year to 89.4 per cent, and Second Class mail quality, in the same period rose to 98.4%, just missing its target by a tenth of one per cent.

Since then Royal Mail has made some of the biggest changes ever made in the way that it operates – moving to single daily delivery, changing the way it transports mail and changing its mail centre operation. After two years where losses reached more than £1 million every day, these major changes are vital if Royal Mail is to succeed in the future. The impact of current problems associated with a minority of the offices undergoing change is not covered by the period reported on today – it will be shown in this year’s report.

Mr Crozier said: “Prior to the strikes many services were demonstrating a stronger level of performance than ever before, and I am confident that once the major changes have been fully implemented customers will see quality improve. Our top priority at the moment is to address the issues that have caused service quality in some places to drop because of teething problems with our operational changes.

“Our postmen and women continue to do an outstanding job, and I, like them, am committed to improving performance for customers and consistently meeting our regulatory targets.”

Full year performance for Second Class mail was 97.8 per cent against a target of 98.5 per cent. In the first half of the year Second Class performance was 98.7 per cent, but dropped during the autumn strike quarter to 95.1 per cent.

Royal Mail’s quality of service results are independently researched on Royal Mail’s behalf. The validity and accuracy of the quality of service data are accepted by both Postcomm and Postwatch. Each month 100,000 sample items are posted and traced by an independent research organisation at a cost of some £5 million a year. These items represent the average postbag and reflect the different volumes and destinations of mail posted in different postcode areas.